Next: Bankruptcy for a whole Generation

Another student protest, another mass arrest. Monday, thousands of students from all over California snarled traffic during their march on the Capitol in Sacramento. Hundreds of students then flooded the Rotunda of the Capitol, a somewhat raucous affair. Eventually, the California Highway Patrol cleared them out, and 60 were carted off and thrown in the hoosegow for trespassing and resisting arrest.

Their problem: tuition increases. Already, tuition in California’s state schools has tripled over the last decade, and state budget cuts will induce universities to jack up tuition again. But the state is out of money. And so it’s struggling in a weird and ineffectual way with its red ink. For California’s ongoing debacle, read…. Searching For The Missing Moolah.

The same day the students were arrested, the New York Fed released a report on the consequences of incessant tuition increases across the nation: ballooning student loan balances that are increasingly difficult to bear:

– 27% of the borrowers who had to make payments (not current students) were past due.

– $870 billion in student-loan balances at the end of the 3rd quarter 2011 (higher than credit card debt of $693 billion and auto loans of $730 billion), up 2.1% from the 2nd quarter, while other consumer debt declined or remained flat.

– Average balance: $23,300. That includes the millions of student loans that, after years of payment, have much smaller balances or are nearly paid off. Average balances owed by recent graduates are much higher.

The report lauded President Obama’s executive actions of October last year designed to ease the repayment burden of federal student loans. Laudable as they may be, they only soothe the symptoms for ex-students by shifting more of the costs to the taxpayer. But they don’t deal with the cause: the system itself. It has become dysfunctional.